March 23, 2013

Apple Acquires Impressive Indoor Location Startup

According to the Wall Street Journal this evening, Apple has acquired indoor-GPS company WifiSLAM, a sign that the war over indoor mobile location services is heating up. The report claims that Apple paid around $20 million for the Silicon Valley-based company. The company describes its main product this way: "Allow your smartphone to pinpoint its location (and the location of your friends) in real-time to 2.5m accuracy using only ambient WiFi signals that are already present in buildings." This is illustrated in two videos presented below. Update Mar 24, 2013 1PM MST

Update Mar 24, 2013 1PM MST: Apple killed the first and best video sometime earlier today. The video showed an aerial view of a person, represented as a blue dot, being tracked through a parking lot to their car in realtime. It was a simple yet effective demonstration of the WiFi based tracking system.

The move comes as Apple continues to build its arsenal against Google in mapping. The company was a two-year old start-up co-founded by former Google software engineering intern Joseph Huang and Jessica Tsoong.

Update Mar 24, 2013 1PM MST: While Apple has also killed the second video, you're still able to see the same clip within the video below between the 23:46 to 25:36 marks.